Record housing queues
The housing situation for students in Oslo is four times worse than last year. More than 2000 students are still on waiting lists for housing.
På norsk;)
- I fear that the cost of housing in Oslo will increase to the point where students no longer can afford to study here, Velferdsting leader Øyvind Gjengaar says.
The housing queue has quadrupled in the course of one year. At the start of this semester, 2350 students are on the waiting lists of the Oslo Students’ Life Association (SiO), a dramatic increase since last year. This means more students have to venture out into the private rentals market, where prices aren’t regulated. Also Boligstiftelsen Nydalen (BSN), a student housing foundation directed at the students at the Norwegian School of Management BI, has noticed a lot of attention from students. Rentals officer Richard Pedersen expect all units to be taken within few days, and says several students are already on waiting lists for the most popular units.
Jens Maseng, head of the Norwegian Students’ Union NSU, thinks soaring rental prices keep students from moving to the big city. For the sake of both students and other people needing housing, the Norwegian authorities need to keep their promise to build more student housing, Maseng says.
- The government needs to allot more money to student housing, as this has a dampening effect on the private rentals market. Students flock to the bigger cities, and the government urgently needs to address the consequences of that, Maseng says.
- The politicians need to understand that the focus on international students requires additional resources, Gjengaar adds.
In Gjengaar’s view, the increasing share of international students makes the lack of housing extra serious.
- Not a crisis
Åge Rosnes, state secretary at the Ministry for education and research, stresses that the housing situation is not a crisis, but admits that throughout the preceding year, the number of student housing units built falls short of the promised number by some 400 units.
- We’ve built 90 new units in Oslo this year. The government considers OAS (supplying housing for students at Oslo University College and affiliated state schools) and SiO (supplying housing for students at the University of Oslo, the Norwegian School of Management BI and a number of smaller university colleges in the Oslo area) as a single entity, Rosnes explains.
Rosnes adds that if the waiting list figures supplied by SiO are genuine, this might lead to a larger number of student housing units being alloted to Oslo by the government in the next fiscal year.
Ine Marie Eriksen Søreide (Høyre – the Norwegian Conservative party), chairwoman of the Norwegian parliaments committee of church, education and research, underlines the necessity of a wider definition of “pressure area” in the allotment process. In Erik Søreide’s opinion, the largest cities aren’t the only places in need of more student housing.
- Not only do Oslo, Trondheim and Bergen need more units, the situation in Stavanger and Tromsø is critical, too. We need to focus on the places where the coverage is low, and the private market expensive and of low quality, Eriksen Søreide says.
Easier come September
Lately, the housing website hybel.no has had about 8000 hits a day. Kjetil Sørbø of hybel.no recommends settling for a slightly bad deal, and then trying to find something better when the market has cooled down.
- Prices have stayed pretty stable in recent years. In Oslo, the average price for a room in a housing collective still is 3500 kroner plus paying part of electricity bill, Sørbø says.
